‘Drowned Lands’ 75
of this particular landscape – a region of rural Britain under-utilized in its litera-
ture – becomes, not an obligation, but an opportunity:
Th e heroic deeds of highlanders, both in these islands and elsewhere, have been told
in verse and prose, and not more oft en nor more loudly than they deserve. But we
must remember, now and then, that there have been heroes likewise in the lowland
and in the fen.^6Acknowledging the dominance – some might say monopoly – of highland hero-
ism within romantic and historical fi ction, Kingsley now foregrounds ‘English’
in place of Celtic and Gaelic peoples and off ers East Anglia’s Fenland as the suc-
cessor to northern English, Cornish, Welsh, Irish and Scottish ruralities. British
masculinity is relocated in an act of historical revisionism and Kingsley redresses
the spatial imbalance of the European literary tradition: ‘there may be a period
in the history of a lowland race when they, too, become historic for a while’.^7
Th e romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – a
movement that infl uenced literature, art, music and philosophy amongst other
media – radicalized attitudes towards the natural environment and subsequently
codifi ed cultural responses to the diversity of landscapes within Europe. Th ese
responses continue to dominate scenic taste and to shape several cultures’ apprecia-
tion of nature, and nature writing. As the cultural geographer John Wylie outlines:
A sense, today, that something beautiful, good and true can be witnessed in ‘wild’
landscapes, and moreover that such landscapes off er aesthetic and spiritual suste-
nance in a manner that transcends utilitarian and rational attitudes is a clear romantic
inheritance. A solitary ‘confrontation’ with landscape, and a subsequent epiphanic
sense of connection and oneness, is another.^8Oneness with nature – an idea exemplifi ed by Lord Byron’s ‘High mountains are
a feeling’ – was, however, limited in spatial terms, as Wylie’s emphasis on ‘wild’
landscapes and Byron’s own focus on elevation suggest.^9 In composing parts of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Byron was – to use Wylie’s terms – aesthetically and
spiritually sustained by the Swiss Alps, as were his companions Percy and Mary
Shelley. William Wordsworth’s debt to the English Lake District off ers another
example of the romantic preference for mountainous regions. Th e added reliance
within constructs of the sublime on grandeur, danger and a frightened delight
in extremities (of terrain and weather) led poets and artists towards a particular
type of landscape and oft en a particular type of climate. In addition to European
mountain ranges and the polar regions, the uplands of Cornwall, Wales, Ireland,
Scotland and the North of England were identifi ed as ‘romantic’ spaces. Th e iso-
lation, solitude and threat of these landscapes predictably gendered their literary
inhabitants. Men dominated this highland discourse; not only that, but male
physicality and vigour were held at a premium.